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Our Favorite Comments of the Year
Online comment platforms can bring out the best — and the worst — in people. At the end of a tumultuous year, Quanta’s editors highlight some of our favorite things you had to say.
The Year in Physics
Featuring paradoxical black holes, room-temperature superconductors and a new escape from the prison of time.
How Claude Shannon Invented the Future
Today’s information age is only possible thanks to the groundbreaking work of a lone genius.
Astronomers Get Their Wish, and a Cosmic Crisis Gets Worse
We don’t know why the universe appears to be expanding faster than it should. New ultra-precise distance measurements have only intensified the problem.
A Mathematician’s Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World
Lauren Williams has charted an adventurous mathematical career out of the pieces of a fundamental object called the positive Grassmannian.
The New History of the Milky Way
Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.
A New Theorem Maps Out the Limits of Quantum Physics
The result highlights a fundamental tension: Either the rules of quantum mechanics don’t always apply, or at least one basic assumption about reality must be wrong.
Physicists Nail Down the ‘Magic Number’ That Shapes the Universe
A team in Paris has made the most precise measurement yet of the fine-structure constant, killing hopes for a new force of nature.
Contemplating the End of Physics
Has physics reached the limits of what we can discover — or are the possibilities only just beginning?